Postgame Quotes - February 22, 2013

Pistons at Pacers

“(What do you say to your team?) Well it’s all the things you say after every time out and at halftime. Look we got our a** handed to us. I mean it was a total embarrassment. We talked about it before the game. You know with Indiana it’s all about blitzkrieg. They blitzkrieged New York, who blitzkrieged us. There is no surprise about what they did. It’s about what they put into the game, the purpose they played with, the effort, the physicality and the passion. Their first 23 points they only had to run three half-court sets. This isn’t a team that lives and dies by the fast break, but they obviously saw that we weren’t making the effort to get back. They put 18 points in the paint out of their first 25 or 26 points.”

“(Is it good that you are playing them again tomorrow?) There’s really no right answer for that. Getting a chance to play them again tomorrow gets us a chance to bounce back. We can get effort from a lot of guys, stuff wasn’t going right for us tonight. I don’t want to use that as an excuse because we are definitely capable of playing better.”

“(On the bad loss) It’s easy to explain really. When you don’t play any defense and you don’t make any shots, especially against a good team like Indiana, you get beat by 30, just like what happened to the New York Knicks the other night. The good thing is that we play them again tomorrow night. We’ll show tomorrow hopefully what kind of team we are. When we play them tomorrow we will try to do better. You have to keep fighting when you get down 15 or 20 points, but then when you have turnovers like we had and they hit some threes and the lead gets up to 25 or more, that happens sometimes in the NBA.”

“I’m very, very pleased with how our guys are approaching the post All-star break. They have incredible focus and energy. Our offense is really coming. (On Orlando Johnson) He’s a testament to a tremendous attitude, and extremely hard work. He’s the first one here and the last to leave. He watches film and pays attention in meetings. He has great desire to learn and improve. He’s not coming out of the rotation in the immediate future. (On Lance Stephenson) He’s playing at an incredible level right now. What he’s been doing to our tempo, pushing the ball is something.”

“The thing we can still clean up is taking care of the ball, but we’re doing a great job of really defending and playing for one another. 29 assists, that’s pretty impressive. (On the challenge of playing Detroit on Saturday) This is our fourth game (against Detroit) now so that gets even tougher. Playing them back to back I know they’ll be well adjusted. It should be a different type of game.”

“We’ve just been playing extremely hard. We’re taking this very seriously. We’ve been sharing the ball and just being good teammates. It’s a hot potato out there and everybody is getting a touch. In the first quarter, everything was clicking for us on the offensive end. We were moving the ball well and were out running. (On the starters getting some rest in the fourth quarter) It’s good. I like to see my teammates put in work who usually don’t get to play that much. I know they put lot of work in and it’s good to see them get a chance.”